It is often desirable to monitor the health of vehicular components for diagnostic and prognostic purposes. In the case of an A/C, specifically, it may be beneficial to monitor the health of components dedicated to vital A/C functions to allow such components to be replaced preemptively or efficiently repaired when appropriate. Consider, for example, an ATSS of the type utilized to initiate MES of one or more air-started GTEs carried by an A/C. An unplanned maintenance event may occur if the GTE responds sluggishly or fails to respond during MES due to, for example, a failure occurring within the SAV, ATS, or other ATSS component. In such an instance, a technician may be dispatched to address the unplanned maintenance event. By monitoring the health of the ATSS components, such components can often be rapidly replaced by the technician to restore proper A/C operation or, more preferably, preemptively replaced to avoid or preempt occurrence of the unplanned maintenance event. Such components are also typically implemented as Line Replaceable Units or “LRUs” to further facilitate rapid in-line replacement without removal of the A/C from service.
Certain devices or “nodes” for monitoring the health of A/C components, particularly those components implemented as avionic LRUs, are set-forth in U.S. Pat. No. 9,507,982 B2. While health monitoring devices of this type are highly useful, customer adoption of such devices has been hampered by limitations related to power supply. Rarely is there provided dedicated leads or terminals on larger A/C components or systems for powering such health monitoring devices. Integration of health monitor devices can thus be burdensome or cumbersome from a customer installation standpoint and may require additional device certification. Further, while certain power harvesting schemes have been suggested for easing integration of health monitoring devices, such power harvesting schemes are often difficult or impractical to implement in practice and may be insufficient to adequately power the health monitor electronics. As a still further challenge, existing health monitors commonly rely exclusively upon rechargeable chemistry batteries or similar energy storage means, the stored energy content of which tends to dissipate over time. As a result, such energy storage means may fail to retain adequate energy content to initially power the health monitor electronics upon startup, which can compromise the timing and integrity of data collection in certain instances.
There thus exists an ongoing demand for health monitoring devices capable of reliability collecting data pertaining to the health of components deployed onboard A/C and other vehicles, while overcoming the drawbacks listed above. There exists a particular demand for provide health monitor devices or, more simply, “health monitors” having improved energy scavenging capabilities, while ensuring reliable data collection and possible data analysis or component health evaluation in the absence of a dedicated power supply. Embodiments of such energy scavenging health monitors are described herein, as are methods usefully performed by such health monitors. Other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent Detailed Description and the appended Claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying Drawings and the foregoing Background.